


Member-of-the-God's-Family

by NevillesGran



Category: The Oracle Trilogy - Catherine Fisher
Genre: hinted Seth/Mirany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does the Speaker-of-the-God do when she grows too old and passes on mask and voice to a new girl? What is there left for her to do, and to be?</p>
<p>Post-canon one-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Member-of-the-God's-Family

Mirany remembered when she'd been masked as Speaker. The Archon, Seth, and the others had been lost in the desert. Argelin had had spears at all their throats, at least in spirit. She had seen the cold fury in Hermia's eyes and thought the former Speaker would rather kill her than mask her.

She remembered that look now, as she carried the mask to the girl waiting in the cave that was the Archon's first birthplace. Her simple black dress was much lighter than the Rain Queen's gown she had worn that day. Mirany wondered whether Hermia had been hiding as much fear as she herself was trying to conceal. Was it easier, when Hermia had never - at least, not for many years - heard the voice of the god?

Tall Tethys waited for her in the Cave of Pythons, the same girl who had taken over as Embroideress-of-the-God's-Clothes when Mirany had moved up to Bearer-of-the-God so many years ago. Well, not quite the same girl - none of them had come unchanged out of Argelin's War (as it was already being called), and the rebuilding of the Two Lands was no easy task either, not even for the Nine. Nor was it finished.

But there was no reason to repeat Hermia's performance, to snatch the mask back, put it on again and continue speaking the god's words. There were no soldiers with spears, no flaming ships in the harbor, no betrayals or raging rivers. At their feet, the Draxis flowed low but swiftly, as it always did around Mirany's late-summer birthday. It matched the rhythm of the drummers at the side of the procession. In this time of peace, under the moonlit stares of the surrounding witnesses, Mirany's old mousiness only let her fingers linger for a moment on the golden mask as she placed it on the new Speaker's face. Tethys's lips moved, one last silent prayer. Then Mirany saw her eyes widen through the mask's slits and she knew the girl was hearing the god's voice.

The Speaker-to-the-God stepped forward, as the old one faded into the surrounding crowd, and addressed her people with the voice of the god. Mirany in her black dress barely heard the words. She stayed behind when the Nine filed away, followed by those members of the Council of Fifty as were there, along with the foreign dignitaries and every citizen of the Port who had managed to sneak up to watch. It was a big event, she supposed. It was a long time before everyone had left the cliffs.

But the god was gone from her head, more silent than he had ever been. She had thought she had known his absence before, those times he didn't speak for months; she used to feel like there was an empty space behind her, as if someone had suddenly stepped back. Now the space was a void, more gaping than the Oracle (she had been to the bottom of that shaft, after all.) It was as empty and endless as the sky on the way to the Rain Queen's Garden.

Almost giddy, Mirany leaned against a rock by the mouth of the cave and wondered if she wouldn't just keep falling.

_Are you really gone from me?_ She asked out of habit, or perhaps some sort of perverse curiosity about how much it would hurt when he didn’t answer. Seth would probably do something like that.  _Forever?_

**_“Of course I’m still here, Mirany.”_ **

Mirany jumped.

“Archon, you’re supposed to be at the Palace, to greet Te- the new Speaker!”

Alexos grinned, teeth bright against his dark face. He was just as slim as when Oblek and Seth had found him in Alecto, though the skin and bones had been replaced with lithe, wiry muscle. If he hadn’t been the god-in-flesh, with eyes even deeper and older than they were bright and warm, half the girls in the Port would have been sighing over him.

He crossed his arms and adopted a familiar, cocky posture, so much like Seth that Mirany nearly smiled. “I’ll be there. They have to proceed through the streets, so everyone can see my new Speaker. I’ll take shortcuts.” He wasn’t wearing a traditional white tunic but rather something dark over faded leggings. Mirany thought the Fox was probably to blame for that.

The Archon dropped his cocksure smile and put one soft hand on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be sad. You can come talk to me any time, you know.”

Mirany bit her lip, and tried make her smile look real. “I know that. I’m just being silly.”

“No you’re not. It’s a big thing, to suddenly have a part of you gone. I feel it every time I die.” His hand came down to tangle with hers. **_“But there is still always me, just as there is still you. There can only be one of me at a time. And I can only have one Speaker._** ”

Mirany shook her head. “I know,” she said quietly. “You only spoke to Seth when we were in the Rain Queen’s realm. I remember.”

“Exactly.” The Archon’s eyes lit up in the moonlight as he glanced over her shoulder. “Speaking of which…”

She turned to see a small group picking their way back up the path. Seth was at the front, holding a torch and arguing animatedly with Fox, who still preferred to go by his street name when he wasn’t literally handling paperwork. Behind them were Seth’s Pa and Telia, and Ixaca, who Mirany hadn’t known had come back from her island to visit. They had become friends before the older woman had to leave; Ixaca was clever and more than patient enough to make up for Rhetia. Next in the group was Lord Osarkon, strolling as if he walked down cliffs every night—for all Mirany knew, he still did, just for practice. Oblek picked up the rear, absently fingering his old lyre.

Mirany mouth was already opening in a laugh as Alexos pulled her forward to meet them.

“Shouldn’t you all be at the palace, too?” she asked.

Osarkon shrugged elegantly. “My lady wife can handle the reception.”

“And they don’t really want the rest of us,” Telia chimed in. “Oblek and Fox scare the courtiers, and Seth will just bore them with numbers.”

The Council Secretary poked his little sister in the ribs. “And you’re here because Pa doesn’t want you flirting with the Mycenaean ambassador’s son.”

“We were just talking!” she said, lifting her chin with a glare worthy of Rhetia.

“Children,” Ixaca mouthed over the girl’s head, and Mirany had to hold back an undignified giggle. Pa was scowling, Oblek chortling.

Alexos slipped her hand sideways to hold Seth’s instead of his own. The former scribe smiled warmly at her, and she returned it with just a trace of shyness.

“We thought you might like to go out to a late dinner,” he said. “But then we realized there’d be a big to-do if we were all in public, so Aniki is back at Pa’s house, whipping the kitchen staff into shape.”

Mirany felt her smile widen. Seth’s assistant was one of the kindest women she had ever met, and wouldn’t raise her voice at a flea. “I’ll have to thank her.”

“See, Mirany?” the Archon murmured in her ear. “You don’t have to be alone at all.”

She turned around, but he was already gone. She could just barely make out a slim figure scampering up the sloping cliff.

“Don’t worry,” Fox assured her, following her gaze. “I taught him all the back alleyways. And he’s the god!”

Lord Osarkon, once called the Jackal, shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the depths of unvicilizedness to which the god had sunk.

“So, dinner?” asked Seth.

Mirany squeezed his hand and looked at her friends in the wavering torchlight. “A late dinner sounds lovely,” she admitted. “I didn’t really eat much today.”


End file.
